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Nielsen Reports a Decline in Television Viewing

10:45 a.m. | Updated
The number of American households with access to a television set and a TV signal is shrinking for the second year in a row.

The data, released by The Nielsen Company on Thursday morning, is sure to be pored over by television and Internet executives for evidence of changes in consumer behavior.

While the vast majority of American homes still have functioning television sets, more than one million no longer meet Nielsen’s definition of a “TV household:” those that have at least one television set and a cable, satellite or antenna connection.

Last year, for the first time in 20 years, Nielsen said the number of such households had dropped to 114.7 million, from 115.9 million previously, despite a rise in the number of households in the country. On Thursday, Nielsen said the figure had dropped further, this time to 114.1 million.
The company, which monitors a sample of United States households to produce TV ratings every day, also estimated that the total number of people living in those homes has shrunk, but at a lesser rate — to 289.2 million, down 100,000 from 289.3 million last year. Nielsen attributes the drops both to economic factors and to technological ones.

Not surprisingly, given the lower number of households with TV sets, the total number of Americans who watched any traditional TV in a given month also declined during the last three months of 2011, according to Nielsen: 284.4 million, down about 1.7 percent from 289.3 million during the same time period in 2010.

To the astonishment of some in the industry, total TV viewing has been on the rise in the U.S. for years, despite a plethora of other entertainment options. But new Nielsen data, also released on Thursday, showed an unusual dip in TV viewing in the last three months of 2011. At the same time, some people are spending more time playing video games and watching Web video — though TV still retains the lion’s share of people’s free time.

In the last three months of 2011, the average American with a TV set at home spent 153 hours and 19 minutes watching “traditional TV” — TV viewed on a set rather than a computer or a tablet. That total is about 46 minutes less than was watched in the last three months of 2010, or a decline of 0.5 percent.

Per person, the decline comes out to be about 30 seconds a day, hardly a seismic shift. But it is likely to be scrutinized by researchers nonetheless because previous surveys in the first nine months of 2011 showed that the average time spent watching TV each month was up versus the same period in 2010.

Nielsen also reported quarterly declines in year-over-year television viewership once in 2009 and once in 2010, but those declines were not as pronounced as the ones at the end of 2011 were.

In a report to its television industry clients, Nielsen wrote of the viewership decline: “This may be the result of leveling off after a period of sustained growth, weather and economic factors or of other viewing options.”

Nielsen defines traditional TV as consumption through a television set, either live or via a digital video recorder or video-on-demand service. The company does not count consumption on computers, phones or tablets like the iPad. That may explain, in part, why the total number of viewers slipped late last year. They may still be watching TV, even on TV sets, but not through cable or antenna connections. Nielsen has said in the past that it is assessing whether to define “TV household” to include these viewers.

“The average American watches nearly five hours of video each day, 98 percent of which they watch on a traditional TV set,” the report states. “Although this ratio is less than it was just a few years ago, and continues to change, the fact remains that Americans are not turning off. They are shifting to new technologies and devices that make it easier for them to watch the content they want whenever and wherever is most convenient for them. As such, the definition of the traditional TV home will evolve.”